“To me, filmmaking is like making a delicious meal. The process of shooting is like gathering the ingredients for the food, whereas post editing is like cooking. Editors reorder the different materials, and create different dishes through proper dressing and seasoning,” she said.

Chen is recognized around the world for what she does. Having edited highly successful films such as Slingshot Prince, Offsprung, and most recently, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Chen is an industry leading editor in China with her work celebrated both there and abroad.

Chen is also a celebrated colorist, often combining her roles on many films. She has enhanced many films through color with her work, including Maskand The Last Page. The latter was a motivational project for the Chinese native, as she was telling a true story about another artist.

The Last Page is a short film that follows the story of a once famed comic book writer Emanuel Delgado. After a long career of award winning comics, and a mega fan base, it’s been nearly a decade since Emanuel abruptly ended his career because of the death of his brother. He is living in a house littered by the drunken debris of his depression until one of his fans show up who is the same age as his brother and encourages him to restart drawing comic books.

“I like this film because it carries positive energy and is both motivating and encouraging. It’s a story about a person coping after the big mental trauma of losing everything to picking himself up and changing his miserable life. It encourages people to never give up on their dreams, reminding them there are always other people supporting and caring about them. We need to cherish our own lives and do more meaningful things in the limited time that we have. I was totally touched when I finished watching this film. It is not only about remembering the people we’ve lost, but also encourages those people who lost their hope from losing the one they love to get out of the deep sorrow and tell them that there is always somebody else supporting and caring about them,” said Chen.

The film premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Film Awards 2017, where it took home the top prize. Chen was both happy and surprised when she heard that The Last Page was an award-winning film, knowing that it touched audiences the same way it touched her.

“I remembered those countless nights that I was talking with the director about the color grading ideas and how we could make this film into a better piece of art. And right now, we can all be proud of ourselves that we made it to the end, although it was just a small step on a long road ahead of me, I will keep up and be more creative as a filmmaker,” she said.

Chen was in charge of all the color grading for this project. The director described what kind of color effects he wanted for each scene after showing her the editing. Chen marked down every detail he mentioned and spent weeks turning his vision into a reality.

There are a lot of scenes in the film that express a decadence and hopeless feeling, and Chen used color to enhance these emotions. She used a heavy yellow and green color tune for showing the messy house environment. After the character’s internal emotion changed, she used some bright and clean color tunes to represent the delightful changes in his life. The whole color tune changed from cold to warm. Her color grading works highlighted the transitions of the moods and echoed the arc of the story, different color rhythms made this whole film vivid and lifelike. Her work took the film to a new level.

“The film had a big creative space for me to do the color grading, through the discussion with the director, I understood what he wanted and started to do the individual color design. Throughout the whole process I had a chance to use the color analyse from other different film types and apply them to this film project. I like the color tunes from Fight Club very much, and I was always trying to get a chance to apply them into my film projects. This short film fulfilled the wish for me by using the Fight Club dirty color tunes to highlight the messy house when the main character was at his lowest point. Also, it created a big comparison later when the main character was back into his normal life,” she said.

Be sure to watch The Last Page to see Chen’s outstanding work and be moved by Emanuel Delgado’s story.

Written by Annabelle Lee